Over 25 years ago a gang of four men took me at gunpoint from a basket-ball court to my school office. They introduced themselves as members of a proscribed organization and made me sit on a chair while they kicked my face.

That was the first attack I encountered on June 14, 1991, in my three decades of working as a Salesian missionary in the north-eastern Indian State of Manipur.

Since then I have been held at gunpoint several times, which is a story quite a few of my confreres working in the field of education can also tell.

Many escape because of sheer luck. At least five have been shot dead in the last 30 years in this this insurgent-infested region where peace seems ever elusive. During the first attack, my abductors wanted me to pay them 400,000 rupees (equivalent to about US$ 11,500 at the time) and give them a video camera and a gun.

As the priest-manager of Don Bosco School, in the State capital of Imphal, I was unable to meet their demands because I had none of those things. And this is something I made very clear to them.

Their reaction was swift and brutal. With a gun in hand, one of them hit me hard on my left cheek. The pain was severe. Later, medical examinations established that the strike had broken my eardrum. The four men then locked me up and made off with the 10,000 rupees (US$280) they found in my office. However, there are about 20 insurgent groups operating in the state and they appear to view Catholic schools as an easy target whenever they want to raise funds to support whatever they are fighting for, which could be for a separate statehood or the goal of establishing ethnic supremacy over other groups. They would spend their time blaming the Catholic schools for a range of imaginary crimes.